


Flashbacks are a Bitch

by Phasewalker (iaret)



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Blood, F/M, Lots of Angst, Mentions of miscarriage, the battle of new haven, what do i tag this with i dont even know
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:18:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1994760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaret/pseuds/Phasewalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Recounting the past is painful for the most powerful Siren on Pandora. The Vault brought a lot of trouble to the little planet, the least of which being this Eridium stuff. While Lilith’s Siren abilities have been getting a little awesome because of it, it’s also brought a lot of trouble. Like Jack, who brought more. </p><p>New Haven still haunts her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flashbacks are a Bitch

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [No Chances](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1385098) by [PompousPickle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PompousPickle/pseuds/PompousPickle). 



> This was inspired by the fic No Chances by PompousPickle here on AO3. It follows the details of said fic, though this is likely only the first part of several, depending on my motivation. The headcanon that Lilith was pregnant and miscarried Roland's baby came from the fic itself, it's a lovely idea (and by lovely I mean traumatizing, but who doesn't love a good bit of angst? I know I do). Credit where it's due!
> 
> *A note about tenses: Lilith is looking back on these events from the present, after the end of Borderlands 2.

It’s hard to think about what things were like before they opened the first Vault. Heh, just thinking about it…the Destroyer was aptly named. The monster destroyed everything: the crew’s childhood dreams, the sanity of hundreds of thousands, and on a larger scale, it triggered the downward spiral that would destroy Pandora itself.

When thinking of the past, the first event that comes to mind is the Battle of New Haven. She’s not sure why; she knows she has plenty of other, nicer memories, but this one stands out. This was the day that changed everything. Jack had shown no interest in the ragtag group of stragglers from the badlands and the few Crimson Lancemen that Roland so passionately called his “rebellion” before that dreadful day.

Thinking back, dreadful isn’t a strong enough word to describe what went down when Wilhelm tore into helpless folk scattered around the center of town.

 _Commotion always draws people out,_ she thinks with disgust, _from bandits to townsfolk to Hyperion personnel, even the bots._ The sound of gunfire may as well have been a drug to those who lived in New Haven at the time. Watching two idiots have a shootout over who killed that one Badass Skag around the corner was a popular pastime for civilians lounging about, waiting for something to break the stagnancy of their lives; the few kids old enough to walk, most of them born in the five years after the Vault was opened, often rallied to see someone get shot, laughing at whoever was unfortunate enough to get his brains flung across the dirt before Roland or another Crimson Lanceman could intervene.

The echoes of little children gathered around blood spatters echo through her idle mind.

_‘I dare you to touch it!’_

_‘Ew, no way!’_

_‘What, you scared?’_

_‘N-No!’_

_‘Then touch it! It’s just blood!’_

What a world to grow up in.

When Jack’s army approached, Wilhelm at the front of an endless sea of Loaders, Roland told her to stay and fight at the gates while he went to find Tannis and protect the Vault Key. She wanted to tell him she couldn’t fight on her own, that she’d be overwhelmed, remind him that none of the Crimson Lance could even scratch the surface of her fighting power, though she knew that he didn’t need reminding. Roland knew the odds. But he didn’t look at her, didn’t offer her another option, and she didn’t want to declare their loss in front of everyone who still fought for their future and the future of the next generation, so she just nodded and kept fighting anyway.

She’d have preferred Roland be at her side, for many reasons. She’d never admit it at the time and she still won’t to this day, but there was a lot of fear surrounding those days, that one more than any other. Not even the days that followed it came close to the pain that was building within her; all that pain coupled with the anger of the coming days would be more than enough for a lifetime.

She’d tried to tell him, after losing New Haven. She’d tried to get his attention away from the pain and suffering of the people long enough for him to focus on her, and their pain, the suffering they were supposed to share: the suffering he didn’t know about yet, and the pain that would eat Lilith herself alive for a very long time afterwards. But instead, the words never came out, and they both just stared when the time came. She was glad she’d gotten the top bunk in their tiny tent. That way, when she layed back, no one could see the tears welling up in her eyes as she felt the crusty, bloody sheets beneath her hands as she grabbed at anything substantial.

When he mentioned Helena and starting a resistance, she nearly leapt at him. Nearly teleported down in front of him with what little energy she had left, just to slap him. The look on his face betrayed him, and also clued her in to the venom that must have been present in her own expression. She remembers asking for just a few days, a little peace and quiet before charging into the fray, before starting a goddamn _war_. He had paused; she must have sounded desperate, because he apologized and asked if there was something she needed to tell him.

She’d quickly jumped into denial, into how nothing was bothering her, since there was never anything, after all. And what little there had been before wasn’t in the picture anymore. Never would be again, at this rate. She had fought back tears that she had every right to cry out, blinking them away for the fallen, and the future, and the child she’d lost in the aftermath of New Haven only days before.

So she decided to make a joke about it all.

She made a crack at how much blood was on her sheets, about how Hyperion wouldn’t even consider that she’d made it out alive, because how could that much blood come from a _single human being_? She snapped about going away for a long time, faking her death, not having anything to do with the crew for years, or ever again. She snapped about how she could distract the bandits so Roland could tend to his precious rebellion.

And he agreed with her, as though she hadn’t just spit poison in his face. He said it could be an advantage. She attributed the statement to snark, but he hadn't sounded testy, only painfully rational.

So she said _fine, let’s do it_.

No one seemed to take her seriously, and the next few days went on tediously, each one marking hours spent alone slinking through gaps between makeshift tents or in the awkward company of people she didn't know. Things hadn’t rolled over, hadn’t returned to what had been before; though she hadn’t expected anything to be the same, she held a glimmer of hope that Roland would accept her kisses again and she could drink with Mordecai without feeling bad, that Brick would cook for the four of them and that they could at least pretend to be normal.

Weeks went by, even months, and Lilith got tired of watching old friends lose hope as new corpses were picked from the wreckage of each lost battle.

She got tired of watching the fear rooted in all of them branch out into paranoia, depression, and unyielding despair.

So instead of watching the rebellion tear itself apart from the inside with talk of death and destruction, she chose to escape the claustrophobia of the small camps and the smell of rotting flesh, opting for a different environment.

Getting Hyperion on her tail was easy; so was charring a corpse enough to fool them. The scream was a bit harder, she remembers, but it must not have sounded forced if it convinced them so quickly. Phasewalking out of there unscathed was a breeze; watching her friends mourn her was slightly less so. Unable to reach out and comfort them, unable to tell them she’s okay and that she’s still right there with them, proved more difficult than she'd thought it'd be. She had enough emotional scarring to deal with as it was. But then, they all did, she muses.

So, whispering an apology into the void of her own personal plane of existence, she slunk off into the darkness to find a new place, with less memories and less pain to constrict her. She’d taken to anxiety in crowded places, and anxiety for the embodiment of flame isn’t great for anyone. She was volatile enough before all this, so it was only a matter of time before she razed the whole camp to the ground because someone so much as looked at her funny.

An icy cave cooled her burning skin and left her with shivers, so it was perfect. A little blood here, some corpses hung up there, a barricade and a few strongboxes of Eridium she could raid from the local miners, and it'd work just fine. She even thought that maybe it could be home. After all, there's a great at the view of the canyon from her overlook!

But she knew better, because the people she loved weren’t beside her. Even Dionysus hadn’t been home. If it had been enough, why would she have come to the desolate wastelands of Pandora looking for the promise of something greater? She’d never had a real home, but Brick, Mordecai, and Roland were the next best thing. Anywhere the four of them could be together was home as far as she was concerned.

Living alone, surrounded by bandits, so close to Sanctuary, newly christened as the stronghold of the resistance, but so far from Roland; never mind the others. Her reconnaissance had shown that Brick left Sanctuary not too long after he returned from years of torture at the hands of Jack, and Mordy didn’t take long to skedaddle either. It looked as though everyone but Roland had given up on defeating Hyperion.

So with fire in her soul Lilith remembers swearing in that moment that she would do whatever she could to protect Sanctuary, not for the rebellion, but for Roland.

She’d given up on the resistance, but still believed in the brave, wise leader she had watched Roland become. And beyond that, she believed in the guy with the cool turret and the dumbass grin, believed in how he’d rub the back of his neck when she looked at him, and believed in the future that was so quickly taken from the two of them and everyone else.

 She always did, though through the years it proved to be a lonely job.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback would be great, and would help me determine if I'd like to post the next parts! Thanks for looking!


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